


Torn from the Northern Sky

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Evil!Tomas, Marcus is not evil but he is rather scary, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-03 18:19:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: "In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of men, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times."- Genesis 6:4 (NLT)-AU in which Tomas is the Devil's intended, and Marcus' veins are flush with the blood of angels.





	1. The Devil's Intended

**Author's Note:**

> This fic happened completely by accident. It started as a small idea, and metamorphosed into something a little bigger that I thought other people might enjoy. I don't even KNOW what's going on here, man.

Tomas met the Devil at a bus stop in August. He was nine, and he spoke first. _“What’s your name, mister?”_

The Devil looked down at him, and Tomas looked up at the Devil, and the tired commuters crowding around took no notice of either of them. The fog was thicker than usual in that part of the city, and it obscured the road at either end of the street. It looked like it was going to rain.

The Devil smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. _“I’d rather not tell you that, little one,”_ he said. The Spanish was easy on his tongue. He spoke it like a local.

 _“Are you embarrassed?”_ Tomas asked, peering up at the Devil from under the hood of his sweatshirt. _“I bet you’ve got a girly name or something.”_

 _“Yep, that’s it. I’ve got a girly name,”_ said the Devil. _“I’ll tell it to you, if you promise not to laugh.”_

 _“I promise,”_ said Tomas. In those days, he gave out promises like candy.

The Devil crouched in front of him, till he was on his level. The Devil is all things to all people. He always looks exactly how you think he looks.

 _“It’s Lucy,”_ he said.

_“What, for real?”_

_“Well, it’s short for something.”_

The Devil took a cigarette case from his pocket, and offered Tomas a smoke. He shook his head, remembering the rancid smell in the living room, the one that had made his mother yell at his father. The Devil returned the cigarette to its case, unlit. He did not take one for himself.

 _“Where’s your grandmother, little one?”_ He asked, standing up.

 _“She’s over there,”_ said Tomas, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. She was waiting for the bus too, crammed on a bench between two other women. Her wrinkled hands were clenched tightly over the zipper of her purse. His grandmother had a fear of pickpockets.

The Devil looked at her briefly, and dismissed her. _“Does she usually do that?”_

_“Do what?”_

_“Ignore you, while waiting for the bus?”_

Tomas shrugged. _“Yeah.”_

 _“She must hate you,”_ said the Devil. _“You must be a very boring child.”_

Tomas dug his hands into his pockets, and searched for something to say. _“No.”_

 _“You are. You must be,”_ said the Devil. Distantly, out of the fog and impending rain, Tomas could hear the honking of traffic. _“Guardians don’t just neglect their children like that. Bus stops are dangerous, you know. You might get on the wrong bus, or fall into the street and be run over. Perhaps you’d get lost in a crowd. Your wallet,”_ he snapped his fingers, the sound bright and sharp, _“gone, just like that. No, there must be something wrong with you,”_ he continued, tucking his hands into his pockets in some absurd imitation of Tomas’ posture. The Devil’s gaze held his like the headlights of an approaching car. _“I bet she wants you to hurt yourself. I bet she wants you to get stolen away.”_

 _“No,”_ Tomas whispered. _“No, stop that.”_

He leaned forward, his shadow casting Tomas into darkness. _“Yes, I’m certain that must be it,”_ he said. _“She must hate you. What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”_

 _“No!”_ His voice was a little louder now.

 _“Do you have a girly name?”_  
  
_“No!”_ Yelling.

The bus roared in, headlights splitting the fog and bringing with it rain spraying up from the tires and the high-pitched screams of the brakes engaging. Newspapers and empty chip bags twirled around their feet, scattered by the wind as the doors slid back and the faceless grown-up commuters around them began to board.

His grandmother boarded too. Then she got off, and began to look for Tomas.

 _“You’re going to miss the bus,”_ Tomas sniffled, hot tears pricking his eyes. He did not want to cry. Not in front of a grown-up.

 _“I don’t think you’re boring,”_ said the Devil. _“I think you are special, and unique, and I think that you are going to have dreams about black mirrors until the day you die. I think your head will be full of black asphalt, and your heart will be full of black oil, and your soul will be blacker than any of these things, no matter what the little black book in your schoolbag has to say about it."_

Tomas’ grandmother grabbed his hand and pulled him away. _"You're going to be a very beautiful man one day, Tomas Ortega,"_ said the Devil.

He was gone before the bus doors closed.

 

 

Tomas Ortega grew up to be a man who dreamed of black mirrors. A man who wore black but for the tender slip of cotton at his throat, peering out at the world like a blind eye. A man who looked at fat, happy Catholics driving past his parish in glossy black cars and thought, _that should be me._  That was the kind of man he was.

There was an empty void inside him that yearned to be filled. Sometimes, when he was feeling romantic, he would liken it to a starless sky, or a sunless sea. Hungry for recognition, for praise, for a lover’s touch. Ambition was his game, and he loved to play it.

Tomas had advantages, of course, and he had certain endowments he was not unaware of. He had soft lips, and thick hair. He had a body as bronzed and disciplined as a soldier’s. If God Himself had breathed life into a Caravaggio, that Caravaggio would have been dead and dull compared to Tomas. And yet, he was not happy. Dark shadows paraded in his skull and whispered good ideas to him, and he listened.

When he closed his eyes at night, this is what he saw:

A black lake. Not of water, but of glass.

Tomas would step forward onto it, and the rubber on his soles would _shriek-iek-iek_ across the flat, echoing expanse. Then the glass would begin to crack.

Tomas’ shoes would begin to fill with oil as the cracks spiderwebbed out into space. Oil would bubble and spurt and hiss, until every crack had poured forth so much of it that Tomas could no longer see which patches of glass remained unbroken.

 _“Cariño,”_ a terrible voice would rumble through the gloom, followed by a different voice, a new and impossible voice, rough and soft and ferocious and gentle and full of every kind of beauty that Tomas despised most in the world:

_“Ashes on the earth, fallen angel . . .”_

Then he would wake up.

One morning, after having this dream, Tomas was brushing his teeth at the sink when he felt something rise in his gorge. It made him feel ill, as though he were terribly sick and all the mucous in his nose had dripped to the back of his throat to choke him. He coughed it up into the toilet, and found it to be knot of bloated blowflies.

He felt a strange sort of biological affection, as though he’d given birth to something. Then he flushed it.

 

 

As a priest, Tomas had the power to bless and absolve, to shame and to sanctify. When he stood before his congregation, they looked to him for guidance. He did many good things with a false smile. If they knew that he was having an affair with a married woman, they did not care, and Tomas liked it that way.

As he grew older his dreams grew blacker, and more frequent. The lake of glass had taken on the glossy shine of a ballroom floor, and the weight of his foot on the glass no longer caused it to crack. He danced with a dark partner, around and around and around, sometimes a woman who would bend beneath him and sometimes a man who he would gladly bend for.

The dreams always ended the same way. That voice, full of that impossibly repugnant beauty: _“Ashes on the earth, fallen angel . . .”_

Tomas began to pray _choose me, I am your son,_ when he gathered with the rest of the Friars of Ascension for _Vocare Pulvere._ That hanging cloud of ash would choose someone else, without fail, every single time. Brother Simon would clap him on the shoulder and say “Tomas, Tomas, my rising star. It’s not yet time for him to come to you. You aren’t _fertile_ yet, but when you are, the Devil himself will embrace you with open arms.”

So Tomas waited, and his dreams grew darker.

One day, Simon was waiting for him in the pews when Tomas arrived at St. Anthony's early to get some paperwork done in the office. “Ah,” he said merrily, standing up to meet him. “Tomas-my-Tomas, there you are.”

They embraced like brothers, and Tomas looked around curiously. “Where are the others?”

“This is between you and I, I’m afraid,” said Simon. He had not taken his hands from Tomas’ shoulders. “An exorcist has arrived in the city.”

_An exorcist._

The thought did not frighten Tomas exactly, but it disturbed him. That there should be an exorcist here, in Chicago, so near his home, was more disturbing still.

“And?” he said cautiously.

“And I would like you to meet him,” said Brother Simon. There was something in his voice which made Tomas uncomfortable. “He is a . . . a singular man, and dangerous to our cause. I believe that you will be able to handle him, where I cannot.”

“How so?”

“Quite frankly,” said Simon, “he repulses me. He is . . . vile, in my eyes. I can hardly look upon him. But yours are human eyes, Tomas, even if you use them to see from our point of view, and I daresay you will be able to look him in the eye where I cannot.”

Tomas nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “I’ll do it."

"That's my boy."

"Where can I find him?”

“He's only just arrived at St. Aquinas.”

“St. Aquinas?” Tomas said with amusement. “Does that make him a deviant priest?”

“More than that,” said Simon. “When you see him, you’ll understand.”

 

 

The sun was shining at St. Aquinas, which was rare for that part of the city. Birds were singing, the flowers were in full bloom. Tomas had yet to see a single crow.

He wound his way through the shadowy halls of the complex, guided only by a little trail of music. Soft music, and wistful, but he could make it out over the sounds of laughter, and cheerful chatter amongst the “guests,” as Simon liked to call them. Tomas caught the tail end of a few lyrics. _But my dreams, they aren’t as empty . . . as my conscience seems to be . . ._

He reached the room at the end of the hall, and nudged the door open to look inside.

The man standing by the window turned to look at him, and Tomas gasped and reeled back, the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. The pain was _indescribable._ His eyes felt as though they were burning out of his skull.

Because he had _seen_ them, for a just moment. The terrible, beautiful eyes of the exorcist. Only they weren’t eyes at all, were they, they had been pieces of _the northern sky itself_ , two tiny slivers of the holy northern sky staring into Tomas’ rotting soul with all the infinite serenity of Heaven . . .

Tomas dropped to his knees and forced his hands even harder into his eyes, until the burning finally faded, leaving him trembling and aching all over. For the first time in many long years, he knew fear.

“Tell me the name of your father,” Tomas spat at the ground, “and his father before him.”

“My father’s name was Nathaniel Keane,” said a voice full of gentle amusement, and the Devil take him, it was the _same voice,_ the one Tomas had heard in his dreams. The one that had repulsed him for its beauty. “His father’s name was Callum Keane. I didn’t get my voice or my eyes from either of them, if you’re wondering.”

“Your mother, then."

“My mum’s name was Milly, and her father before her was called Michael, the Archangel.”

_The blood of an angel._

“Get up,” said the exorcist, and Tomas found himself obeying. _His voice,_ he thought deliriously. _He has the Word of God. He has Divine Authority. He is going to kill me. I am going to die._

Tomas got to his feet and stood silently, staring at the worn-out sweater, and the crooked limbs under it. Anywhere but the eyes, which had been torn from the northern sky, the very fabric of the heavens, and were alive with a perilous divinity that was anathema to men like Tomas.

Hatred began to rise in him. Ugly, rotten, easy hatred, pooling in the bottom of his heart like an oil spill.

“Tell me your name,” he said angrily.

“Father Marcus Keane.”

“We need to talk.”

“Yes,” said Father Marcus. “I think we do.”


	2. Something Halfway Divine

Marcus Keane was born with two fleshy knobs where his eyes should be, like a fish at the bottom of a deep-sea trench. He did not cry, and his birth was a difficult one. He was eventually cut from the womb.

His father hated him on sight, of course. No child of his could ever be so small and deformed. Yet although he came into the world hated and ugly, Marcus stubbornly clung to life. His heart still beat. His lungs swelled with shallow, steady breaths.

Late one night, when his mother was nursing him by the window, she prayed that God, or the Saints, or an angel, or _someone,_ would come down from Heaven and fix her child.

As it happened, someone answered her prayer.

She would later tell this story, again and again and again, as Marcus grew older. She would tuck him into bed and whisper it in his ear, or write little notes to him on his lunch bags, calling him “my seraph.”

This was because his grandfather was an angel.

This was how Marcus’ mother described him: He had skin that burned copper-bright, like metal on the cusp of melting. His eyes were like embers, smoldering in their sockets, and seemed to leave little streaks of light in the air when he moved his head. He had Marcus’ hands, and Marcus’ quirky mouth. Mother said he smiled like him too. His name was Michael.

He had visited her that night, when she prayed for someone to fix her child. Michael had taken him from his mother’s arms and smiled at him, bouncing him gently in his arms. Marcus gurgled at him, and Michael laughed.

 **I will not fix him,** he said affectionately, **for he is not broken, but I will place the northern sky in his eyes, that he might see with all the clarity of the angels, and I will sew the northern wind into his lungs, that he might speak with all the authority of Heaven. This is all I can do for him, but it will be enough.**

And it was.

 

  
Marcus grew into a tall, scraggly blond, with narrow hips and a smile like the edge of a knife. The Church had snapped him up quickly after the deaths of his parents, (and he remembers it still, the blood that was halfway divine spilling out across the peeling linoleum, his father standing over her, sweating and animal and not a bit holy,) and had secreted him away in the deepest, darkest corners of the Catholic Church. There he began to thrive.

Marcus stepped blinking into the sunlight with a collar around his neck and a righteous calling singing in his soul, for the Church had seen him for what he was, and had already begun to use him as a weapon. He was quiet, and soft-spoken when he wasn’t shouting, and he preferred to keep his tongue behind his teeth unless it was needed. The northern wind was sewn into his lungs, after all; he spoke with Divine Authority, and whatever he said would be, would be. When Marcus spoke, demons fled.

So when he stood in the graying halls of St. Aquinas, and prayed to God, “Please, send me a sign,” he had only to speak the words aloud, and it was so.

The sign came in the form of a devil, with whom Marcus was now strolling the grounds.

No, Marcus thought, as he assessed the priest walking beside him. Not a devil, but a man who was like a devil in form and face, and in the graceful economy of his movements.

Father Tomas walked with his head down and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Marcus, who had walked all his life as though his Father were the King of the world, felt a profound pity for this man. The Devil himself had latched onto the underbelly of Tomas’ life like a leech, and he would feed until Tomas wasted away under his teeth.

They had walked in silence for some time now, round and round the gardens, assessing one another. Marcus would now and then catch a glimpse of Tomas’ eyes, shining like black beetles in their sockets. He was careful not to make eye contact; the rims of Tomas’ eyes were still red and raw from when Marcus’ gaze had burned him.

Marcus had never before seen a human soul react so terribly to his eyes. Most found them warm, or even benevolent, though whether that was a product of the eyes themselves or the soul behind them, he couldn’t guess.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tomas muttered.

“How’s that?”

“Like I’ve pissed on the Bible.”

“I’m not looking at you any such way, Father. And I’m sure I haven’t yet done anything to earn your scorn.”

“It’s not _scorn,”_ Tomas said scornfully. “It’s pity. Something halfway divine like you, consigned here of all places. A dumping ground for deviant priests.”

“Funny,” said Marcus. “I was feeling a similar pity for you. Although,” and here he nodded at Tomas’ expensive shoes, and the pomade in his hair that smelled just a little too expensive for the clergy, “you seem to be doing well for yourself. The Devil cares for his own, does he?”

“Better than your God does, if He’s allowed you to fall into such a state of disrepair.”

“Scars are nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Fuck you,” said Tomas. “Do you think the Devil would’ve picked me for his bridegroom if I'd had scars? _You must offer a perfect animal. It may have no defect of any kind. You must not offer an animal that is blind, crippled, or injured, or that has a wart, a skin sore, or scabs. Such animals must never be offered on the altar as special gifts._ Your holy book may have been talking about gifts to the Lord, but as above, so below, and the Devil does things no differently.”

Marcus stopped walking; they had been just about to pass one of the empty benches scattered throughout the garden. “Do you want to sit down?” he asked gently. “You’re working yourself up into a bit of a lather.”

He saw Tomas’ lips curl over his teeth in a grimace. _He can’t look at me. Poor, wretched creature._

They sat down side-by-side, on opposite ends of the bench. The thought of touching him was intolerable to Marcus; his hand would surely come away smeared with ash, if it didn’t just catch fire outright.

“In all my years of casting out unclean spirits,” said Marcus, “I’ve never encountered anything quite like you. You’re unique. _Special._ I bet that’s how they got you, innit?”

Tomas’ hands, which had been clenched into tight fists in his coat pockets, began to unclench. “Yeah,” he said, almost lightly. Then _“Yeah,”_ as though he were shedding a burden. “Do you hate me, for what I am?”

“Hate’s not in my blood,” Marcus said honestly.

“Didn’t used to be in mine either,” Tomas sighed. “I hope you know it’s nothing personal.”

“What?”

“The demons, and the things they put you through.”

Marcus’ gaze settled on a pair of distant birds, hopping about in the grass. Beside him, Tomas leaned back on the bench and crossed his legs, getting cozy inside his coat.

“The scars, the violence, the abuse whispered in your ear,” he continued. “All of it. It’s a means to an end. Now, I’m good at seeing people. Almost like,” and here he made a lewd gesture with his hands, “almost like I can split open their skulls and spread wide the two halves of their brain. I can find that trembling heart of you and squeeze it until it pops, so let me tell you the truth: It’s not about the children. It never was. It’s about what hurting the children does to the Father. We can’t touch Him. No one can. We can only touch the children, and if we touch them in just the right way,” another lewd gesture, “it really gets Him. It really cripples that big, beautiful celestial heart. Are you always this quiet?”

“Always,” Marcus said softly, because it was true, and because the northern wind was howling behind his ribcage, bringing just to the cusp of saying something he might regret.

 _Unclean spirit,_ he thought. _Ashes on the earth, fallen angel_.

Tomas laughed at that, actually laughed. “Very mysterious, Father Marcus, very cool. I’m not afraid of you, you know.”

“Then why won’t you look me in the eyes?”

Tomas blanched, and looked away quickly. His gaze fell upon the birds Marcus had been watching, and he was silent.

For a long moment, they sat and watched them. Two birds of the same kind, playing together in the grass. First one would peck, and then the other. Friends. As far as they were concerned, they were the only two birds in all of Chicago.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go on then,” Tomas said drily. “Shoot me between the eyes, why don’t you.”

“Why did they pick a priest?”

“I think they like the obscenity of it,” said Tomas, because it was a question he had thought about many times before. “Lucifer’s intended, wearing the collar signifying one of God’s bridegrooms. It’s an evocative image.”

He stood up, brushed some nonexistent dust off his coat. “Marcus,” he said firmly, “I want you to leave town.”

“Why?” asked Marcus gently amused. “You have no authority over me.”

“Because I am so close to being worthy of him,” Tomas said urgently, his beetle-eyes glittering again. “This is all I have, Marcus. You don’t understand. You have a birthright to the divine. But I am an _animal,_ Marcus, not a spirit. I eat and piss and fuck like any other animal, but I am so close, _so close,_ to being part of something greater. To being . . .”

“Special?”

“Yes,” The word was bitter on Tomas’ tongue. “Yes, and you could ruin all that with only a word. I want you to leave.”

“I will leave,” said Marcus firmly, standing up to face him, “when I am good and ready to leave.”

Tomas’ face was white with anger and frustration. He kept his gaze firmly on the ground. “So you're going to keep me  _company,_ is that it?” he snarled.

“I’m afraid so,” Marcus said, with a little genuine apology in his voice. “The problem, luv, is that I think there’s something in you that can still be saved.”

Tomas spits at his feet and storms away from him, scattering the birds as he goes. Marcus raises an eyebrow at his retreating back.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Marcus calls out across the garden.

Tomas does not reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By popular demand, a heretofore unanticipated Chapter 3 is on the way. Stay tuned!


	3. Night of Ill Omens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't intended to write a third chapter of this, and yet, here we are. Thanks for coming along with me on this weird little journey! Also, special shout-out to @tlaloc on Tumblr, who has been kind enough to help me edit the Spanish in my fics to make it sound more appropriately regional!

Tomas Ortega likes to work late, when he can. He’ll stay after-hours in the church long after Tara has gone home, and write sermons with his feet on the desk and his chair leaned back on two legs. It’s either that or going home to write them in his cramped apartment, which shakes when the L goes by.

Tonight he’s examining Paul’s letter to the Colossians with more than his usual fervor. _Therefore, let no one condemn you by insisting upon pious self-denial, or the worship of angels, saying that they have had visions of these things. Their sinful minds have made them proud._

He’s beginning to find it difficult to focus at this late hour. The sound of the rain outside is slowly, but surely, lulling him to sleep. Sleep doesn’t come easily to him these days, and he’s starting to consider abandoning the sermon to crash on the couch in his office.

Tomas is just about to close his Bible when he hears the unmistakable rattle of someone pounding on the church doors.

He flicks his gaze up at the clock above his desk. On any other night, he wouldn’t dare open the doors this late. Not with him alone in the church, and Chicago being Chicago.

Tonight, though, he feels powerful. Big as a mountain and twice as cold.

“Hold on!” Tomas says loudly, raising his voice and hoping the visitor can hear him. He shoves his chair roughly aside- the legs screech on the floor- and goes out into the sanctuary to march down the center isle. “Yes, yes, I’m coming!”

The wind is howling something terrible; it’s a night of ill omens if ever there was one.

Tomas finally gets his hand on the door latch and pushes the door open. It yawns wide, and lets in a powerful gust of wind that tugs at his clothes and lashes the church floor with rainwater. Tomas squints against the torrent, trying to make out the face of the bedraggled thing on the doorstep.

She’s such a little thing, standing there in a coat much too big for her. Her blond hair is scraggly around her shoulders, and her eyes remind Tomas of a dog expecting to be beaten.

“Father Tomas?” she says shakily. Rainwater is sluicing down the planes of her coat, splattering onto the floor in little rivulets. “He said . . . he said you can help me.”

“Casey! My God! Come in, please, please,” Tomas stammers, taken aback. He steps aside, lets her squelch her way in with heavy, wet-sounding footsteps. He closes the door behind her and leans against it, assessing the situation. “Casey,” he says finally. “I . . .”

“You were always so willing to help us, give us advice,” Casey blurts out. Tomas can see that her hands are fisted in her pockets. “Mom, I mean. And Kat. Look, I just . . . he said you could help me, and I just . . . I don’t know what to do.”

“Shush, Casey,” Tomas says placatingly, holding out a hand in what he hopes is a calming gesture. “I’m here to help. Always, I’m here to help. But you know, it would have been better for you to come during church hours. Anything might happen to you on a night like tonight.”

“I know that!” Casey snaps. “I know that.”

“Who was it that told you I could help you, exactly?”

“I did,” says the man at the pulpit.

Tomas, to his credit, does not cry out. Wordlessly, he lifts his head, ignoring Casey to fix his gaze on the pulpit at the front of the church. The pulpit where he preaches, every Sunday. The one he’d fucked Jessica in twice.

The man standing there is a bit tattered around the edges, but Tomas knows him immediately for what he is. He grins at Tomas, showing ash-blackened teeth.

Tomas doesn’t speak to him, nor does he speak to Tomas again. There is something unspoken between them. _She must not know that we can see each other. That would ruin the fun._

“Casey,” says Tomas, looking back at the girl’s grime-streaked face. “Why don’t you answer me?”

She looks down at the ground, unwilling to meet his gaze. Tomas knows that look. That I-can’t-look-a-priest-in-the-eye look he loves so much.

“You know what,” he says, before she can say anything. “I can see that this is very troubling for you, and that perhaps you do not wish to talk about it. So,” Tomas claps his hands together, “how about I unlock the confessional, and you can talk to me in there. I promise you, nothing you have to say will make me think any less of you.” _I think very little of you already._

Casey nods shakily. “Alright, I . . .” she wipes her nose with her hand, then steels her expression, as though angry at herself for her lack of control. “Alright, that sounds . . . good. Let’s do that.”

She hovers close by him while he’s unlocking the confessional, shooting furtive, shamed glances at the man in the pulpit. Tomas glances up at him too, and with every glance the man becomes a little more deformed, a little more ragged and worn. Tomas wonders what his name is, and if he knows he’s looking sicker by the second.

“There we go,” he says, as the second door clicks open for his key. “All aboard.”

He smiles. Casey doesn’t. Tomas lets her enter first, shutting the door firmly behind her, before entering the second booth himself. It’s a familiar space, and one he enjoys inhabiting; warm and dark and tightly confined. Tomas breathes in the familiar dust, and thinks of how awful it would be to be a claustrophobic priest.

Darkness enfolds them. Beyond the walls of the church, lightning splits the sky like cracks in a frozen lake.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Casey whispers. A formless voice from the dark. “It’s been . . . I don’t know how long, since my last confession.”

“Take your time,” says Tomas. He closes his eyes and rests his head against the firm wooden wall behind him. Closing his eyes makes little difference in this darkness. “I am here to help you in any way I can.”

He can hear Casey’s shallow breathing in the book next to him. She sounds distraught. Tomas wonders if he should’ve offered her a hug or something.

“I . . .” she begins. “I . . .”

“Go on,” Tomas prompts her. “I’m listening.”

“I’m sorry!” she says, a little shrilly. “I’m sorry, I just . . . God, I don’t know what to do. I . . .”

Her voice abruptly chokes off into silence.

Tomas catches a whiff of brimstone from the booth next to him. He doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t try to look through the grate.

A moment later: **She’s really something, isn’t she?**

“If by something, you mean . . . something small.”

 **She has these little notions of self-worth in her sometimes. Really, it’s something to see.**  A deep, rasping laugh.  **I like this church, Father. You’ve done well for yourself. Still got your parish thinking you hung the moon in the sky?**

“A rising star, they call me,” says Tomas smugly. “Your star seems to be falling lately.”

**Oh?**

“I don’t know who you are, but even I can see that Casey Rance of all people is not worth the time and attention you are spending on her.”

Another little chuckle. **It’s not about the girl, _Putito del Diablo._ It never was.**

Tomas opens one eye. _“El putito del Diablo?”_ he says, in what he hopes passes for an amused tone. “Is that what they’re calling me Down There?”

 **Oh they call you worse,** says the demon in Casey Rance with barely contained pleasure, **but after all, we _are_ in a church.**

Tomas is about to say something scathing in reply, but before he can, a particularly violent crack of thunder rattles the front doors in their frames.

The demon falls silent. Tomas does too, his eyes fixed on the inside of the confessional door.

 _That wasn’t thunder,_ he thinks.

Another violent crash echoes through the church, and Tomas jumps in his seat. Suddenly the confessional seems far from a safe place. He hears the low, agonized groan of the church doors as their wrenched open, and he starts fumbling with the confessional door, trying to open it, trying to see . . .

“Where are you?” he yells, not to Casey, but to the entity inside her. In the booth next to him, he can hear her shaking breathing, and the scrabbling of her fingernails on the door. Tomas is blind; all he can do is touch, and listen, and breathe.

Footsteps on the church floor. _Click, click, click._

“Casey . . ?” says the voice of Marcus Keane, quiet and questioning. “Casey, your mother’s very worried about you.”

“Marcus?” Casey says breathlessly. _She knows him,_ Tomas thinks. _How did Marcus get to know Casey Rance?_

Tomas hears the door to the other confessional booth swing open and then slam shut, and Casey’s voice, pleading, “No, no, no, he’ll see you, no!”

Marcus shushes her gently, and Tomas hears Casey’s pleads dissolving into soft sniffs. “It’s okay, it’s alright. I’ve got you, Casey. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

And Tomas knows then that she will be. Marcus Keane had said so; it could not be any other way.

He listens to Marcus gently soothe her, hears her sniffling trail away into silence. If the demon was still within her, he had, for a moment, left her alone. The wet, mossy smell of Chicago rain soon overwhelms the sulfur-smell of the demon’s breath.

Tomas remains in his confessional prison, breathing dust.

Dimly, through the wood, he hears Marcus tell Casey to go outside and wait for him.

“In the rain?”

“Yes, in the rain,” he said, and Tomas hears the unmistakable _fwip_ of a jacket being unzipped, and the sound of it being draped over Casey’s shoulders.

Then footsteps. The sound of the storm outside grows louder as the church doors swing open again.

Then they are alone. Awfully, horribly, beautifully alone.

“There is something profane in this church,” says Marcus Keane, his voice doing sinful things to the word _profane._

Tomas keeps his mouth shut, does not make a sound.

He hears Marcus pace back and forth across the creaky wooden floorboards outside.

“I know you’re in there,” he says, not unkindly. “You really wasted no time getting into mischief, eh?”

“In all fairness,” says Tomas, “mischief came to me.”

He hears the other booth open with a low, rasping creak. Marcus sits down, boots scraping on the wooden floor, and he shuts the door behind him with a click.

“Confess.”

All at once the air seems to leave Tomas’ lungs; what a cramped, dusty tomb a confessional can be, when you’re on the wrong side of it.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he says, because he can do nothing else in the wake of that terrible, powerful voice. “I have never confessed with true honesty and contrition in my heart.”

“It is never too late to seek absolution.”

“I have no need of your absolution,” says Tomas bitterly. “I would rather be damned.”

“Humor me.”

“I’m sleeping with a married woman.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’ve fucked her in every pew. Is that a sin, oh Father?”

“There are many who would say so, yes.”

“I’ve lied, and stolen, and bribed my way through the Church in order to get where I am. I was once driving down State Street and I hit a man on a bike. I didn’t stop the car. Just now, in the confessional with Casey Rance, I envied the violation she suffered at that demon’s hands. _What do you want with me?”_

This last came out as a roar, much louder than he'd intended it to be. Outside the rain pours down in sheets and buckets.

“I think the more important question is, why are you here?”

Marcus’ voice is cool and supercilious, not quite mocking, but close enough to make something tighten in Tomas’ belly.

“I am here,” says Tomas, his voice shaking with emotion, “to live quietly, and to do what damage I can until the Devil comes to claim me. And when he is through with my body as a vessel, when he has worn it out and used it up, he will carry my soul off to Hell with him, where I will become a prince among demons. That is why I am here. Why are _you_ here, Marcus Keane? What are you but the product of an indiscretion between an angel and your grandmother?”

“Why are you scared of me?”

“Why aren’t you scared of _me?”_

“I walk with an army of angels at my back,” Marcus says simply. “The Devil is not like God, Tomas. If you pray to him, he won’t come running.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Tomas growls through gritted teeth. “Why are you here?”

“I am here to rid the world of unclean spirits.”

Marcus’ voice is the absolute picture of patience. It makes Tomas want to scream. “Am I an unclean spirit?”

“I’m still deciding.”

Tomas turns to face him through the grid between their boxes. He can see Marcus’ face, pale and statuesque in the dim light. He’s facing straight ahead, not looking at him.

“If I were,” he says, “what would you do? If I were an unclean spirit, here in this church with you. Would you damn me?”

“No,” says Marcus gently. “I would forgive you.”

_Forgiveness._

The word hurts Tomas more than he thought anything ever could.

Tomas turns away, stared straight ahead at the wooden door of the confessional. The silence is thick, tangible. Even a crack of thunder would be welcome, but there is only the rain, and the low, ghoulish moan of the wind.

“I’m not sorry for anything I’ve done,” Tomas says weakly.

“You don’t have to be.”

“I do. I do have to be. And you know I have to be,” he continues, his voice rising. “You know I have to be, you, you you you . . .” he’s stuttering now, forgetting his English in the sudden ugly, biting, vicious streak of anger that’s rearing up its head inside of him.

Tomas digs his fingers into the grid and tugs on it, as though rattling the bars of a cell. “I don’t need you to forgive me,” he hisses, and now finally, finally, a peal of thunder shakes the sky outside. “And I don’t need _you_ , you, you self-righteous _pendejo! ¡Maldito cabrón, me gustaría arrancarte los ojos y hacerte comerlos para la comunión!”_

The confessional door blasts off its hinges and skitters across the floor in a shower of wooden splinters. Tomas gasps and presses himself against the back of the booth, eyes wide, breath coming in wretched splutters. He hadn’t meant to do that. He doesn’t know the rules of the game that he's playing, of what dark power he’s been impregnated with. No one had ever told him, and now, now, now there’s an angel in his church, and if he cries out to Lucifer, no one will come running.

_Forgiveness._

If he can still be forgiven, then all of this . . . all of it . . . has been for nothing.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Tomas says, staring at the splintered door. He thinks of the windows, tries to imagine them shattering under immense force, but the thought alone doesn’t do what his anger had done.

The other side of the booth creaks open, and Tomas scrambles out of the confessional to avoid Marcus coming around and trapping him inside. He backs away down the aisle, hand raised. “Don’t speak,” he says shakily. _“Don’t you speak.”_

Tomas glances over his shoulder at the church doors. They’re still open, as though Casey had run out into the rain without looking back. He looks back at Marcus, slouching in the doorway of the confessional booth. His hands are in his pockets, and there’s a look of undefinable sadness on his face.

“I’m sorry, Tomas,” he says. Tomas laughs shrilly, but Marcus continues. “You’re not an unclean spirit, I see that now.”

“Oh, only evil? Only some _profane thing?”_

“I don’t know what you are,” says Marcus. He looks down at the shattered remains of the confessional door. “I’m not sure I want to. I you can do that . . .”

Marcus sighs, and seems at a loss for words.

“I know,” he continues after a moment, “that I disturb you, Tomas. I think that, if circumstances had been different, we might’ve been good friends. However,” Marcus narrows his eyes, and Tomas feels goosebumps spring up on his skin. “There is still the matter of Casey Rance.”

Tomas’ blood runs cold. “Oh?” he says, feigning a casual tone. “What about her?”

“You were going to deceive her.”

“No . . .”

“You were going to convince her to say yes, weren’t you? That was your intent?”

Tomas says nothing. He grits his teeth, and looks down at the ground. Marcus’ gaze is on him; he can feel the piercing stare of his eyes.

“I think it would be better,” says Marcus coolly. “If you were to leave town until I’m finished exorcising the demon in Casey Rance.”

“I can’t leave,” says Tomas at once. “I have obligations to the Church.”

 _“Tomas,”_ says Marcus firmly, and there’s that voice again, that terrible voice that speaks all things into being. _“Get out of Chicago.”_

The silence between them after this pronouncement is deafening. Tomas can hear his heartbeat ringing in his ears, louder than the storm outside.

Slowly, he turns around. His shoes squeak on the wooden floor of the church. Behind him, he knows that Marcus is watching. 

The wind lashes rain against Tomas’ face and tugs at his clothes as he stumbles out into the darkness of a Chicago night. It’s immediately almost impossible to see, the yellow-and-orange lights of apartment windows casting discordant smears of light across the street around him.

Tomas takes off down the sidewalk, in and out of shimmering patches of orange light.

“The Devil is not like God, Tomas,” Marcus had said. His words have burned themselves into Tomas’ brain.. “If you pray to him, he won’t come running.”

“Neither does God,” Tomas sneers into the rain. “Neither does God.”

_I’ll be back, Marcus Keane. Oh I’ll leave town, but I’ll come right the fuck back. And I meant what I said._

_I am going to tear out your eyes._


End file.
